Last week I was able to attend DataWorks Summit in Washington DC I was greatly anticipating this event as its the first DataWorks to happen in the US since Clouderas merger with Hortonworks The joining of these two companies was highlighted throughout including key messaging around the companys commitment to its open source Enterprise Data Cloud platform The conference offered a dynamic range of sessions which focused on the core theme of bringing data from the edge of the business into next generation applications such as AI the phrase Edge to AI featured prominently across the conference There were several keynotes that highlighted the new Cloudera including a presentation by Cloudera CMO Mick Hollison Mick started the conference by discussing Clouderas Enterprise Data Cloud in detail Mick told the audience that after speaking with customers they found that there was need for a solution that could support public cloud private cloud on-premises and hybrid deployments and meet the requirements of a broad range of users Additionally Mick said that a key requirement for customers was that Cloudera offered a shared data experience termed SDX by Cloudera by establishing a common metadata experience to begin to break the silos needed to drive anything a customer might want to do with Cloudera The ability to break down data silos was an important theme that stood out throughout the DataWorks conference and many of the sessions had presenters who had created a shared data experience using Cloudera to improve a business process Through breaking down the silos of data Cloudera believes its customers will be able to fulfill use cases around business growth connecting the business through IoT and protecting the business through compliance The importance of quality data as a foundation for the successful application of AI was another key theme In her address to attendees Hilary Mason the GM of Machine Learning at Cloudera stated you cannot do AI without performing analytics and big data correctly Hilary went on to discuss how critical a clear process and strategy are in approaching data found within the enterprise to begin AI oriented tasks